Jose'phus GORIONIDES
10. GORIONIDES, or JOSEPH BEN GORION, or JOSIPPON. The Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, mentions among his contemporaries and countrymen another Josephus or Joseph, whom he distinguishes (
De Bell. Jud. 2.20, sive 25) as
ϝἱὸς Γωρίωνος, the son of Gorion.
In the middle ages there appeared a history of the Jews (
Historia Judaica), written in Hebrew, in an easy and even elegant style, professedly by Joseph Ben Gorion, a priest, or, as the name is Latinized, Josephus Gorionides.
The work, which in the main coincides with the
Jewish Antiquities and with the
Jewish War of Flavius Josephus, was regarded by the Jews of the middle ages with great favour, and was supposed by many to have been written by the celebrated Flavius Josephus.
But the general conclusion of Christian critics of modern times is, that the
Historia Judaica is not written either by Flavius Josephus or by the Joseph Ben Gorion, his contemporary, but is a forgery, compiled chiefly from a Latin version of the works of Flavius Josephus by a later writer, probably a French Jew of Brittany or Touraine, after the sixth century, as appears by his applying names to places and nations which were not in use till then.
As the history is in Hebrew, a further account of it would be out of place in this work.
